Yogi Bhajan Lecture: “There is Nothing in Sex and without Sex there is Nothing”

In the House of Nanak, the life of the householder is the highest spiritual path. Through creative union, couples function in the sixth sense, which unites them beyond time and space. This process of amalgamation between couples is real, and it must succeed now and forever.

Yogi Bhajan teaches us that there is nothing in sex and without sex there is nothing. This seems at first not to make any sense. Like many of Yogi Bhajan's teachings, it is a purposely provocative statement. Let's take a closer look and try to understand what he is getting at.

In a yogic marriage, sexual communion becomes an instrument to raise your consciousness and take you to divinity. According to Webster, "communion" means "sharing, exchanging, common possession, and spiritual union." Sexual communion is consciously, willingly, blending with your partner in a pure sexual merging that is a spiritual act. Two become one in the sense that each represents the other, each can speak for the other, each lives for the other, and each stands for the other. It is a bonding that exists beyond this physical world, and it is a bonding that is eternal.

Sex has everything in it when it is performed consciously by two people as an act of merging the physical, mental, and soul bodies together. Then those two bodies become one simple unit. At that moment, nothing stands between those two. This pure merging causes those individuals to become one with everything. It is without ego.

If one can know that two can amalgamate to the oneness, then one can know the secret of oneness. By knowing the secret of oneness, one can be one with the One universal existence. Sexual communion is that divine. If you allow your ego to become involved, the experience is lost. For example, if a woman thinks, "I have to have intercourse with him because he gave me a necklace (or he brought me flowers)," then it becomes a business of selling character values for benefits. Sexual communion is a willingness in which two identities want to amalgamate. The amalgamation of two egos brings out a neutral, new personality.

In the scriptures it is written:

"They are not said to be husband and wife who merely sit together.

Rather they alone are called husband and wife, who have two bodies and one soul."

Understand that when you make an alloy you take two elements and put them together. The alloy cannot be separated. That is what love is, that is what marriage is, that is what life is, and that is what good luck is. When a male and a female merge together, it is a pure act in spiritual unison. It prepares them to merge consciously into the infinity on that day when they depart from this earthly world.

Sexual energy is a powerful, vital energy that is continually generated within the human body. It offers a vehicle for fulfilling a divine destiny, and therefore requires the most reverent mental, physical, and emotional preparation. During the merging of two, feelings are aroused to the point of worship. Shakti (feminine energy) worships the Shiva (male energy), and Shiva melts like the early morning nectar into her. Then there is a unity.

The act of sex is very powerful, very energetic, encouraging, inspiring, and it widens the consciousness. It does everything right when it is done with the right intention, the right environment, the right circumstances, and with the right person. But when these things are not right, then it can create psychological problems, bring out childhood traumas, and lead to guilt, insecurities, anger, and fear.

When sexual behavior is selfish, it becomes nothing but a tragedy. When one's life is motivated by unconscious sexual feelings, when one is unaware of the consequences of thoughts and behavior on the self or others, when one creates a world based on selfish sexual actions (lust), attachments, or perversions, then there is nothing that is good or real. Such behavior becomes destructive to the self and others. Sexual union is a vehicle that can create an evolution of energy unto heights of ecstasy. But when it is wrongly performed in abuse or obligation, or is misused, it can be detrimental to the same being; so in both ways, it is an energy.

This is a very tricky subject. Nobody can afford to be lustful and as such dis­ connected from the needs and joys of the partner. But everyone must love. Without love, you can never find your life, and with lust you can never enjoy life. Yogi Bhajan says: "Sexual communion cannot happen until a woman knows her divinity and manifests the faculties of the moon as the man manifests the faculties of the sun. Then a couple can understand and appreciate the waning and waxing of each other.

What happens otherwise in unconscious sex is an unfulfilling, draining, and mechanized exercise. You put a lot of coal on the fire, you create a lot of steam, the locomotive moves, it creates the sound, and then there is a release. That is the end of the situation. It is a purely physical act, and this leaves the couple drained of their energy.

"Sexual communion takes you beyond the five physical senses, into the sixth sense, which is the total amalgamation of your five senses at a higher frequency. We call it the 'sixth sense' or the 'sex sense.' The human body can emit a sexual scent that can affect any person. Once a woman becomes attracted by the scent of a man, she may contain the man in her psyche, and there is no power on this earth that can separate them. The human scent is very powerful.

"The sixth sense is completely intuitive. Each one feels the other. Sexual energy between couples travels in a circle from a woman's Third Eye, or sixth chakra, over to a man's sixth chakra, then down to his second chakra, over to the woman's second chakra, and then back up to her sixth chakra. Sexual energy travels in this cyclical motion, which is controlled by the woman.

“A man has to understand that a woman has all of her sexual organs internally, while a man's are external. It is a within and without situation. Her entire mechanism is inside. A man's entire mechanism is outside. So he must learn to play more to bring her out. That is fair sex. Otherwise, it is unfair sex. It is also 'ladies first,' meaning ladies should reach their tidings (climaxes) first.

"You must understand that in life there is nothing but energy. Matter is a form of energy. Matter cannot be destroyed, nor can it be created. It can only be changed. So your physical body has energy that can be transformed into matter, or matter in your body can be transformed into energy. During sexual intercourse you play out this energy exchange.

“There are many kinds of physical intercourse i.e. intercourse through verbal dialogue with the tongue, intercourse through seeing with the eyes, intercourse through listening with the ears. But the question is, 'Does the couple consciously understand the frequency of communication and the flow of energy?' Until a couple consciously moves the energy with the sixth chakra in unison with the second chakra, they do not know sex at all."

When sex is only a physical impulse, it does not encompass the entire experience because the couple does not exchange the energy of each other's psyche, which connects the electromagnetic (energy) fields and produces the experience of one soul in two bodies. This exchange can bring happiness, better communication between the couple, and the amalgamation of two psyches in which neither is an individual. As Yogi Bhajan explains:

"Couples can have sex and produce children, and they can have a sexual release, but that release brings only temporary satisfaction. We call it ‘rupture sex,’ i.e. sex for the sake of sex. Lay your number, lay her up, and go away. This makes a man non-communicative, and any guilt derived from the act can also make a man unproductive. It is a serious handicap for males and females in this society.

"Let us take an example. Suppose a boy starts when he is just 13 or 14, scattering his seed among as many girls as possible. Then he marries when he is 26. So by that time for 12 years he has been following this behavior, and it has become habit. He may want to change, but it is almost impossible. Here in the West, girls come from the same training school. Both have been trained to have quick sex and depart. For years men in the West have been trained to be selfish, and then later on in marriage they are supposed to become very homogeneous and cooperative.

"Realistically, people go right on behaving as they were trained. ‘You know, she has the habit of sleeping with Joe, and she has been with Robert and Henry...' up to 11 or 12 people. Her psyche carries an imprint on her aura of each man she has been with, and this makes it difficult for her to concentrate at all.

"And he also has the habit to be with 32 girls so he is going through his mental movie. Both are in their mental movies and neither knows how to be for the other, or to feel the other, or live for the other. These old habits are some of the main causes of every known trouble in the sexual life in this country.

"We usually act as the by-products of circumstances, environments, and actions that constitute the habits that make up our behavior. Habits are embedded in the subconscious, and on the average our subconscious guides about 60% of our actions. Prejudice and bias guide about 25% of our actions, and only 15% of our behavior is conscious. Our sexual failures, our social failures, our family failures, our individual failures, and our human failures are failures because this is how we have been trained.

"We can look to an alternative training. In the yogic scriptures life has been divided into four phases or 'ashrams.' First is 25 years of celibacy when a man may retain within himself all the semen for growth and knowledge. After 25 years of age, man and woman may marry and have children, up to 50 years old. From 50 to 75 years, one may travel the Earth with his or her partner, sharing teachings and wisdom from experiences in life, re-establishing contacts from youth, and inspiring people to become healthy, happy, and holy. From 75 to 100, one may sit and meditate and wait for the call to quit. This is how 100 years of life have been divided in the normal prosperous growth of a human being.

"If somewhere within a human, the ego gives up and the will of the Infinite prevails, then one can become healthy, happy, and holy and consistently experience a sacred sexual life. Every human being has a choice and the power to change.

"These days many marriages are dissolved between the age of 36 and 45. That is a period when marriage has become boredom, and everybody wants to look to new values. You must be aware that nobody looks to new values, and there is no such thing as boredom."

Marriage is an institution that cannot get boring because it is a continuous battle against time and space. How can a thing become boring when you have to exert every minute of your life to keep going?